It’s time to review how we build communities in California. Because we can jabber all we want about better managing forests and climate change or no climate change ... but it’s going to boil down to what we can actually have control over.
While allowing property owners as much freedom to do with their property as they please, we can’t afford to ignore or avoid thinking about some basics when it comes to developing housing:
• How do we permit people to build a house out in the wildlands.
• How do we invest in the burial of power lines that have now been blamed for starting more than a dozen serious conflagrations.
• How do small towns and cities nestled amongst the forestland engineer safer environments, including ample roadways in and out. How do they limit house-to-house combustion?
• How do we manage forest and grasslands around where people live? And who is responsible for what? The federal government, or state government, or private landowners? How do you allow timber harvest without being bogged down in lawsuits or without upsetting an already delicate environmental situation? How do you even find a suitable market for timber harvested? Who pays to have tall grass and brush cut back?
• How do we invest properly in firefighting infrastructure and manpower?
Fires have been growing in frequency and intensity and there is no end to them some years ... the fire season goes on forever.
The Camp Fire is the worst ever in acreage, structures and deaths. It’s going to be bad. The fatigue many of us feel after dealing with the daily bad news is partly because we know, in the backs of our minds, that the news is only going to get worse. There could easily be hundreds of dead when it’s all summed up; and there are many thousands who will be without homes ... probably for years.
This is a tough situation. A terrible toll. If we do nothing now? What an utter waste.
Whether you trust in signs or whether you trust in solid logic, it seems that various systems of thought are converging on this ... fires have gotten worse, they’ll keep on getting worse. We can’t avoid it.
We’ve advocated for people of the region to keep their spirits up, to not give in to the fatigue and despair bred by the tragedy and the bad news and the acrid, smoke-filled air. That, we still believe in.
But from now on, for the next generation, every election from here on, whether for governor, or congressman, state representative, county supervisor, city councilmember ... we need to require candidates to explain what their priorities are and turn away those who don’t list planning and infrastructure reform to reduce the likelihood of fire.
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